Martinis and Laptops by Otto Von Schirach.

Can silence be "noisy"? Why do punk bands downplay their musical abilities? What do 37 minutes of ceaseless feedback and squawking birds tell us about the human experience? Calling upon the work of noted cultural critics like Jean Baudrillard, Georges Bataille and Theodor Adorno, philosophy and visual culture professor Hegarty delves into these questions while tracing the history of "noise" (defined at different times as "intrusive, unwanted," "lacking skill, not being appropriate" and "a threatening emptiness") from the beginnings of 18th century concert hall music through avant-garde movements like musique concrete and free jazz to Japanese noise rocker Merzbow. Ironically, it is John Cage's notorious 4'33", in which an audience sits through four and a half minutes of "silence," that represents the beginning of noise music proper for Hegarty; the "music," made up entirely of incidental theater sounds (audience members coughing, the A/C's hum), represents perfectly the tension between the "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music, from Satie to punk. Hegarty does an admirable job unpacking diverse genres of music, and his descriptions of the more bizarre pieces can be great fun to read ("clatters and reverbed chickeny sounds... come in over low throbs"). Though his style tends toward the academic (the "dialectic of Enlightenment" and Heidegger appear frequently), Hegarty's wit and knowledge make this an engaging read.

This means [technology] is part of our being, being as part of, or as counterpart to, the world. The modern world has literalized this, and limited it to tools we use for work in the world. As a result, we imagine that beings, tools and the world all occupy distinct places (or are discrete categories) and we lose contact with a more authentic way of being. As technology in the usual, limited sense is so central to noise (as it is to music), this insight about technology can at least provide us with a way of refusing obsessions with machine technology in its own right. For the moment, though, the significance of Heidegger's idea is that there can be no separation of technology from other human activities. (Hegarty, 2007:23 )

...

Given Merzbow's view of the arbitrariness of his titles, we might be advised not to read too much into sound content as musical content (i.e. meaning). Like Jackson Pollock, we should, I think, take it that what is content is shifted - in Pollock's case to the expression of his subjectivity in chaotic paint pattering. This would be hard to do in Merzbow's case, but in both examples, we can take the 'formless' forms as their own content, form and content caught in recursive relation, and continually crossing one another. And yet, you cannot ignore that a Pollock picture is entitled Galaxy, or that a Merzbow album is named after a specific elephant seal (Minazo). (ibid, 161)